


Training Games

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-19 19:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16541015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: A collection of shorts about the training that the boys must have gone through to get to the levels of skill they are at.





	1. Prompto’s First Target Test

**Author's Note:**

> This literally started as a random thought.

“Just like a game, just like a game,” the mantra wasn’t regulation, as far as anyone knew. It just sort of came into being when Prompto first picked up the gun that had been offered, and taught to hold it. Now he stood at the firing range, the weight of the Crownsguard regulation pistol far from a comfort or familiar in his hands. “Just like a game…”

The night before had been spent with Noctis at their favourite arcade, ‘practicing’ as Noctis called it with a laugh. The brightly coloured, plastic toy for the game had been almost a comfort after his first slew of tests and exams. But now it was make-or-break time; it was the actual firing test, the license test… The first step to a uniform that would keep him at Noctis’ side for as long as he was wanted. 

His arm was starting to shake, and he lowered the weapon to take a steadying breath. The training had been intense. Gladio had warned him as much, has stayed by him to keep him going. Ignis had talked him trough the late nights studying for the exams, the theory practices, the tests and the trials needed to get him this far. They had both helped him where they could; already the top graduates from the Academy Prompto had never dreamed of applying to. 

And Noctis… Noct… 

“Take your time,” Cor muttered next to him; he carried a clipboard and a pen, but Prompto had already made it his marks in safety and knowledge of the firearms. “You’re fine.”

Prompto refocused like he was taught, and raised his gun again. Three short shots and he realised that he was no longer shaking under the scrutiny. There was a low mutter from his inspector, from his teacher, and the Marshal glanced back to silence them. 

“Sorry! Sorry!” Prompto started, safety glasses and headphones already coming off, gun laid laid down on instinct, aimed into the range. “Should I do it again? I can do it again. I can do better.”

The soft rumble of chuckles from the hardened Crownsguard reviewing him made him shift from foot to foot; he fidgeted with the headphones as Cor reached over to bring his target in; “Prompto, relax. Look at how you did, first.”

“Right. Right… Look first,” Prompto studied the target as it was brought closer for inspection. He tried to see how off he was, what he needed to correct. He started to worry when there was no indication on the edges of his missed shots. “Looking, looking…”

“Centre, Prompto,” Cor pulled the target down, and indicated the three shots so close to the centre that they were almost indistinguishable— just one hole through the page rather than three distinct shots. “Dead centre.”

“What? No. Really?” The others stepped forward, his trainers over the last six month— his instructors through the very basics of Crownsguard boot camp; through the terrifying ordeal of stepping over the line of civilian and royal guard. Prompto knew there had been exceptions put in place for him— the Prince’s request, the Marshal’s recommendation. “I did good?”

Cor nodded, and marked down the score on his clip board. He had insisted on being there, to perform the final assessment himself. Now he smiled with just the smallest hint of humour; “You got a high score, kid. Good job.”

“Do I get a certificate with that on it? Like a high score thing?”

“If you want.”

“Can I tell Noct?”

“Yes. And be sure to tell him that you beat his score by a mile.”

“I’m better than Noct?!”

Cor offered him the target, folded the page for him to take home as proof of his hard work. “Clean up, and we’ll get you that certificate. Welcome to the Guard, Argentum.”

“Thank you, sir!”


	2. Link Strikes

Teamwork was a learned skill. That lesson had been drilled into them ever since it became apparent that none of them seemed to understood what the concept of teamwork— really, positive collaboration— was. Cor watched them train— one after the other, over the course of years. He paced the edge of the training rooms, watching forms and stances from the sidelines shadowed by the galleries. He watched as Noctis— the scrawny young prince— stumble as he struggled with the heavy training weapons his mentor hefted around like they were toys. And to Gladio they were toys— wooden mockeries of real swords he dragged across the polished floors in his haste to catch his nimble partner. 

Cor watched, arms crossed and back pressed against the cool stone of the wall, as Ignis moved through obstacles and around the weighty swings of Gladio’s greatsword. He timed them each as they manoeuvred through the obstacle courses— balanced easily where they needed to, agile where it was warranted— and cheered each other on like the good friends it had always been hoped they would become. 

They still acted alone, instead of together. 

So Cor challenged them. 

“Two hits,” he ordered, patting the oversized, overstuffed training dummy; “one each. Go.”

He watched Noctis move in first, his one-handed sword in perfected form. But he moved alone, oblivious to Gladio’s bulk crashing in behind him. 

The seventeen year-old built like the behemoth that was his father was crashing down on the younger prince with all the grace of a falling tree. Cor stepped back to watched the chaos unfold. “Outta the way!”

“Gladio!” Ignis moved to intervene, to pull Noctis away from the inevitable. Caught in the mix, it was only momentum that that spared Ignis the indignity of being trapped beneath the sworn-shield-in-training when they tangled together and crashed. 

Noctis was furious, fist clenched around the hilt of his training sword until his knuckles were white. 

Cor sighed before the shouting and blaming could start. 

“Again.”

They righted themselves and stepped back to their starting positions— each one the same paces away from the target. Each one just as likely as the other to strike first. 

Where Gladio focused on the target— the threat, the enemy— Ignis was focus on Noctis. Noctis rushed in again, and Ignis caught him when he slipped. When the weight of the sword toppled them over together while Gladio groaned his disappointment at them both. 

Cor remembered his own youth spent in solitary training. He remembered being Noctis’ age, and impatient, resolved, imperious— over confident in his skills where Noctis was eager to prove himself. He remembered watching the then Prince Regis with his comrades, moving in tandem, in sync, linked together in the thrill of their own skill. They had been at war then— the beating at their doors more pressing than the peace behind the wall. They had needed to work closer, move together, understand each other, if they were to survive the darkness building on the kingdom’s borders. 

Now… 

He watched the boys bicker, and thought of the frigid snows that followed in the Niflheim footstep. 

“Enough,” he barked out, and watched as Ignis and Gladio snapped to attention while Noctis sulked. “Enough fighting. You’re going to work together.”

He rested a hand on the dummy again; “This is an official test. Two hits.”

He tapped the dummy twice in quick succession and saw the gears turning behind the eyes of the cadets he had helped raise. They were expected to be friends. They had been pushed together into these tight quarters, the shadow of the Citadel looming over them while their names opened doors and blocked off paths around them. They had grown up with the expectation of camaraderie and friendship already mapped out for them, with no chance to sort out what that meant for themselves. 

“The only way you’re going to get this is if you work together.” Cor crossed his arms and stood back. “No solitary blows. You work in tandem. A hit and a miss is failure and you run the course then try again. Got it?”

There was a chorus of meek ‘yes, sir’ and he settled back against the wall. He spotted Clarus and Regis in the gallery opposite, watching with amusement as he set the kids on their task. 

With each impatient charge forward, and each careful attention paid to the wrong target, the boys failed. And they ran laps as promised through the course they had each mastered years ago. On the course, the outcome was better. 

Gladio boosted the smaller Noctis up the steep climbs without thinking, Ignis praised Noctis’ balance and Gladio’s grace across the beams and ropes. Noctis paused in his headlong rush through tumbles and jumps, to let the others catch up. 

And he saw it click. 

They still failed. That day and the next. And the next. But they understood. 

Cor caught them around the Citadel moving in tandem, complementing each other. Gladio in his uniform, Ignis in his sharp suits. Both trailed in Noctis’ shadow like a part of their prince. 

They got closer to their goal in the next week. 

“Again,” Cor ordered, arms crossed as he watched the boys finish their laps together. He nodded up to where Clarus and Regis had joined them in the gallery again, and saw the subtle shift. 

“Gladio, stop!” Noctis huffed, freezing his Shield in place; “You’re always going in too early. Let me.”

“You? I’m clearing the way, pipsqueak.”

“I’m faster than you.”

“He has a point, Gladio,” Ignis offered, polearm tapping against the floor as he considered the target; “When you move in, aim just above Noct’s head. Noctis, make your hit and duck. Move right, beneath Gladio’s sword.”

Cor nearly breathed a sigh of relief as the boys finally planned their steps. He almost didn’t have the heart to call it a failure when Gladio hesitated to strike in Noctis’ wake, aiming too high and only skimming the dummy rather than striking it. Almost. 

The next try was easier, once they had caught their breaths from the laps. 

“You hesitate,” Gladio said to Iggy as they took their positions again. “Don’t think. In and out, and ignore Noct.”

“Ignore?” Ignis sputtered, “but what if—”

“You know what I mean, Specs. In and out. No thinking. Noct, in and to the right; Iggy likes going in on the left.”

Noctis nodded at the assessment, at the order, “In and to the right. In and to the right.” 

Ignis steeled himself for the order to move— his analysis of placement, movement, momentum not turned off quite so easily as he stumbled at his lunge, nearly catching Noctis. But he struck the dummy. And Cor hesitated. 

It had been messy. Imperfect. He had counted a dozen ways he could have cut the boy down in his hesitant moves. But he struck the dummy with the polearm, just as Noctis got out of his way. They moved together. Cor felt all eyes on him for his verdict.

“Astrals’ sake, Leonis,” Clarus said from the gallery, startling the boys out of their silent pleas for a passing mark; “give it to them.”

Cor huffed and nodded; “It counts. But do better.”

He sat back to watch, and guide, and correct. The boys kept practising. For the rest of the month, they worked together to master their timing, their beat. Ignis learnt Gladio’s habits just as well as Noctis’; Gladio found the flaws in Ignis’ imperfect balance. They sat together during their breaks, tracing lines and strategies while Cor observed. He watched as they got bold and brave, as they laughed and experimented. Gladio took to launching Noctis’ lighter weight around like a weapon itself, giving the smaller prince the force needed to unbalance the dummy before Gladio took his momentum to to topple the thing over. Ignis was agile— his work with Noctis a blur as they practised their strategies the same way they tackled ropes and balance beams. 

Some days, Cor sat up with Clarus and Regis in the gallery, watching the boys laugh as they made their challenge more complex, more demanding. He watched with the worried fathers as the boys stumbled and rushed to each others’ aid, and smiled as they encouraged each other. 

They drilled and worked, linked together like brothers.


	3. Iris

“A lady must be courteous.”

The training rooms were off limits. The weapons’ rooms were off limits. The back gardens— that stretch of soft, thick grass surrounded by fragrant flowers and trees— was off limits, when the Prince was dragged over to their home by her big brother. She could watch them— if her homework was done, if she had behaved through the week, if the Prince allowed it— as they sparred, tearing up the soft grass on the warmer days.

“A lady must be kind.”

The ground rules had been in place for as long as Iris could remember.

She had her own training, in a sense. She had learnt diplomacy, almost. She learnt to smile and watch and learn what others were doing first. She learnt— dressed up for the royal court at her father’s side— to tell when someone was lying. To watch when someone fidgeted and fretted beneath the imposing scrutiny of the King.

“A lady, of your standing,” was how the lectures always started; “must always be observant.”

Iris grew bored standing still and watching, like her father. She knew that her patience would wear thin if she had to attend these same meetings and galleries and appointments she was dragged to with Ignis. 

These sorts of things were always Gladio’s strengths. 

The training rooms at home were off limits. 

No one said anything about the rooms in the Citadel. 

Ignis helped her leave the boring meetings. He directed her to the right halls, to the quiet places no one went to. 

The Prince smiled when she visited him. When she sat on one of the benches that lined the quiet training rooms, and promised Gladio to move if they started getting too close. When she watched them move and spar, and tease each other. 

Some days, Noctis traded spots with her on the bench. 

“Watch,” Gladio would instruct her instead, carefully wrapping her wrists and hands while Noctis lounged on a bench and pretended to ignore them; “this is so you don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t.”

“I know.” 

They taught her how to throw a punch. How to use her size to get around her brother’s careful defences. They showed her how to punch, and kick, and manoeuvre around the chaos of a fight. She watched, as Noctis laughed when she got a hit or three on Gladio’s side. She watched, as Noctis directed her in patterns, in plans, to team up against her brother in these games. 

It was after they discovered that Gladio could toss her around like he did with Noctis, that they realised they weren’t alone in the training rooms. 

Iris learnt, above all else, to be observant. 

She was midair when she saw Cor slip through one of the doors. 

Gladio panicked when she slipped on her landing. 

Noctis had summoned a real weapon at the intrusion, the interruption. And stood between his friends and the figure who had dared to step through the door to startle them. 

“Grab an ice pack from the first aid kit, highness,” Cor said as he stepped towards them, as the very real, very sharp sword Iris had never seen in Noctis’ hand disappeared in a rain of shining phantom crystals. “You okay, Iris?”

“Don’t tell dad!”

It had come from all three of them. It had Cor shooing the Prince off to his task, and Gladio torn between a soldier’s greeting to his superior and a brother’s fretting over his sister. The brother always won out. 

Cor knelt down to look over her ankle, carefully, quietly; “And just what were you planning to tell Clarus about this?”

Iris worried her lip as Noctis delivered the ice pack, as Gladio fretted over the question. 

Cor just offered a small smile. 

“It’s hardly anything, but your father won’t be happy with me for letting you get hurt.”

“You didn’t,” Noctis started. “I—”

“You knew!” Iris had watched him slip into the room like he knew where they would be. Where they would be focused. She had seen, in that moment, that he looked as if he belonged in there with them. 

Cor nodded, straightened and stood as he let Gladio take over on the twisted ankle and the few bruises that might appear. “We weren’t going to say anything while you kids were having fun. Just use the padding next time.”


End file.
